Reuters reported at 11:54 AM EST on the ideology inspiring the terrorists who murdered and butchered Americans in Boston on Monday:

His “World view” is listed as “Islam” and his “Personal priority” is “career and money”.

He has posted links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war and to Islamic web pages with titles like “Salamworld, my religion is Islam” and “There is no God but Allah, let that ring out in our hearts”.

He also has links to pages calling for independence for Chechnya, a region of Russia that lost its bid for secession after two wars in the 1990s.

The page also reveals a sense of humor, around his identity as a member of a minority from southern Russia’s restive Caucasus, which includes Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and other predominately Muslim regions that have seen two decades of unrest since the fall of the Soviet Union.

…

“I don’t have a single American friend,” one caption quotes him as saying. “I don’t understand them.” [emphasis added]

****

I will state my position about what has happened this way:

Al Qaeda’s Attack on America on September 11, 2001 = the beginning of World War 1

Two NON-ARAB, WHITE, WHOLLY AMERICANIZED Homegrown Millennial Jihadists Take America Hostage And Launch a New Template for How to Wage A DIY, Low Budget-Download-The-Instructions-Off-The-Internet Terror War = the beginning of World War II.

As such, I would like to primarily address those who have not yet given up progressivism, moral relativism, and the Democratic party — the three idols I grew up worshiping for the first two decades of my life. (I realize now that the reason I abandoned progressivism is simply that I didn’t go to graduate school whereas most of my friends did. My brainwashing gradually wore off after I got out into the real world and had to try and survive.)

This is not an oppressive, Corporate Imperial war waged against harmless Muslims. It is a war that Islam has declared against Enlightenment-based societies. The problem is not the Koran or Islam. The problem is radical (as in going to the root of the idea) Islam or Islamism, or Orthodox Islam, or the traditional Islam of history that requires the marriage of mosque and state accompanied by full implementation of chop-your-hands-off-style Sharia. Muslims who reject Koranic literalism and affirm Enlightenment philosophy are A-OK. (See Robert Spencer’s article this morning to see the great Jazz music some of them have made. And note Roger L. Simon today — Islam is not a race.) Muslims who embrace America instead of demanding American submission can enjoy the riches of Liberty just as every immigrant who has come to this land throughout the centuries to worship their God and work hard.

We need to stand with genuine Muslim liberals against both the terrorists and stealth (non-violent) jihadists rebelling against the Modern world.

That requires identifying those in the political and media classes who sabotage these efforts. Here are 10 examples of those whose ideas undermine the safety of Americans and the twin projects to nurture political liberalism in the Muslim mind and Enlightenment values in the Islamic soul.

1. Progressive Filmmaker Michael Moore:

“They know nothing.” It’s very important for Moore to try and undermine the credentials of anyone who can affirm that Sharia is a real threat. In Moore’s world Global Warming is more dangerous and cigarettes and car accidents cause more deaths per year than Islamists. Corporations have killed plenty more people than this “one teenager.”

It's amazing to watch how they all fall in line with "the new narrative." It's almost like Journ-O-List is still active. It's like watching a flock of starlings all shift at nearly the same instant.

So "They're just 'knuckleheads' and 'losers.' " Let me tell you something, Leftists: It doesn't matter if I'm killed by an idiot or a genius. I'm still dead.

How does robbing a 7-11 make them knuckleheads? What a stupid statement. Lots of dangerous criminals commit minor crimes while on the run.

What does helping kids with Down's Syndrome have to do with anything? Jimmy Savile was a HUGE charity spokesman. Why do people expect that evil people are always evil and nothing else? This is why lawyers always like to bring out in trial that their defendant is a baseball fan: so the jury will think, "Hmmm... I guess he's not as bad as I thought!" What stupidity.

Violent Jihad is absolutely part of his "breadth and complexity and history" of Islam. In fact, it's a HUGE part. This "religion of peace" is a very new concept in Islam, and it's a description used mostly by non-muslims.

Bottom line: the teachings of Jesus Christ were peace, love and tolerance. The teachings of Muhammed were war, jihad and intolerance. Islam will NEVER completely escape its warrior code origins.

I have been reading these columns and comments for a couple of days and it finally struck me. Why are we, non Muslims asking questions about what Islam "needs" to do and how can we help Islam to moderate.

We have zero control and arbitrarily close to zero influence over what Muslims do. Our discussion of Islam's "needs" is a fools errand - in the extreme. If Muslims are going to change their philosophy en mass it is they who will need to ask the questions.

All indications, however, are that the only questions the Muslims are asking themselves go something like this: "Idiot infidels, how can we push them further into dhimmitude?"

We need to stop this ridiculous exercise in futility and start asking what WE can do to promote OUR values.

A friend of mine is a (very liberal) Lutheran Pastor. After 9/11, he told me that he was planning a course in his church to "understand Islam," "focus on all the things we have in common," and "make sure his congregation didn't harbor any ill will toward Muslims." It was all very groveling and boot-licking. Why not tell the truth and let the congregation think what they will? Why must the facts be massaged and edited with political correctness?

My justification for my thinking that "moderate Muslim" is an oxymoron is based on whether or not a believing, practicing Muslim can pick and chose among the militant/not so militant verses in the Koran to "believe" and or "practice"....or not.

By picking and choosing verses he/she will become neither "fish not fowl" and most probably considered apostate by their authorities or arbiters of their Koran.

A "moderate Muslim" is like a woman being a "little bit pregnant".

Hence the passive Muslim, "passive" is a better term than "moderate", is as much in danger of his/her throat being slit by a co-religionist, as I am - as an infidel.

We're in for a long, bloody, and frustrating battle. Lawyers in our Congress can't come up with the politically correct definitions covering this nebulous, amorphous Warfare we have with this book of anti-Christian, anti-enlightenment demands.

There's no compromise with the Koran. How can there be "moderate" Muslims? Would they be, then, just a little bit Muslim?

Dave, I am not parsing words, my point specifically was that in order to get to the point there is an enlightenment a religious reformation is a necessity. Mr. Billings history is a great point to support this. The power of the Catholic church and and it's entwined power structure, particularly with the French monarchy, had to be broken in order for the Enlightenment to commence. You say they need an enlightenment, I say they need a Reformation first. This IS about religion and morality. Simple intellectualism is not enough.

I completely disagree. The Protestant reformation of Christianity was needed because the Medieval Catholic church had grown away from its Biblical roots and had become idolatrous. Protestant Christianity was an attempt to restore what had been lost and return to a Christ-centered and Bible-centered instead of a Church and priest-centered Christian religion.

Islam started approx. 610 AD. Battle of Tours was in 732 AD. So it only took Islam about 120 years to sweep across the Middle East, knock over Spain, and start shoving itself into France's backside. They didn't spread their religion that speedily by knocking on doors and politely handing out free pamphlets. Still wonder why the Crusades happened, folks?

@DaveSwindle. I too really like Mr. Billings deep dive into the history of imperialism and empire. I would add this related thought. One of the problems facing the Enlightenment based West is that our categories of thought just don't seem to work when trying to understand and deal with contemporary Muslim jihad. Just as the elder brother had no American friends and couldn't understand Americans and felt we had no values, our cultural DNA does not allow us to understand him. We are dealing with a people who did not experience the enlightenment and also did not experience the Reformation and participated in the renaissance, but did not persist with it. But they do participate in the late modern world. The Muslim Brotherhood is the founding organization of modern Islamism and it is very much inspired by two post enlightenment totalitarian ideologies - fascism and communism. 9/11, Bali, Madrid, London, Ft Hood, Times Square, Boston - are a globalized, post modern version of what the Enlightenment West experienced in the first half of the 20th century. But it is different too, because it is rooted deeply in a pre Enlightenment and pre Reformation past - and yes, imperialist past. I don't have the new categories of thought needed to understand and defeat this phenomena but this article has cast a wide net and I find it particularly helpful because it contains so many different voices left and right in close juxtaposition.

The problem is this. The Enlightenment was not one monolithic movement. The English and Scottish Enlightenment had a great impact on those who would go on to found the Constitutional Republic of America. The French Enlightenment would profoundly impact the French Revolution and the resulting Terror, and the German Enlightenment, very influenced by the French courtesy of Frederick the Great of Prussia, would end up highly influential on what became Nazi Germany.

America's Progressives were also highly influenced by the confluence of French and German Enlightenment. Liberals are the non-religious wing of Progressivism.

Should we wish for Islam to be more influenced by Hobbes, whom the founders rejected or by Locke, whom the founders embraced. Do we wish for them to be influenced by Kant or Hegel? Though its my take that through their embrace of Nazi Germany they already were.

With the rejection of Hobbes and his belief that absolutism was necessary because of mans depraved nature, our founders not only rejected monarchy, they rejected the Puritan brand of Calvinism which had the same view of humanity as Hobbes though he was an atheist. That view led a Puritan belief in the need for absolutist religious control. Both of these views were ultimately rejected by Americans. Thus the Constitution which acknowledges the basic goodness of man, while also acknowledging our slavery to sin, noting as did Madison, that men are not angels.

The Enlightenment was enabled by the Protestant Reformation, but as of yet there has been no Luther who has arisen within Islam. As a religion that has placed cultural norms from the time of its founding as religious dictates, it would first be necessary for a religious reformer to come about well prior to an intellectual reformer. Despite all of Erasmus' treatises, it took Luther and the other religious reformers to create an environment in which intellectual enlightenment could truly take place that would do more than live in the rarified atmosphere of academia, but could take root among the common people.

I would submit that it is the rejection of the English Enlightenment in favor of the French and German that brings us Progressives, courtesy specifically of Kant and later Hegel. Liberals are much more fond of the French brand, not the German brand. Not all Enlightenment movements were the same. The exploration of this is a post all its own.

Nevertheless, it took religious reformation first to bring about the enlightenment, and until or unless that is acknowledged not only by practitioners of Islam but by the West, so eager to jettison the religious roots of intellectual freedom, nothing will change.

Though WWII is counted from 1939 to 1945, the rise of Fascism and Nazism predated that timeline by more than 16 years. A sobering thought no? Many warned previous to the war, all were ignored.

It depends on how one chooses to define "the Enlightenment." If you define it as a period of time then a whole bunch of conflicting thinkers all get thrown in together. I'm not talking about the Enlightenment in terms of "ALL ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS." I'm defining it in the context in which I talk about it in the article.

It's important not to get so hung up on individual words all the time and instead try and read an argument in full instead of chopping it apart to death. When I get into arguments with my progressive friends all they want to do is argue over dictionary definitions of individual words. They can't see the forest for the trees. And they're not the only ones who think in such limited ways, obsessing over words.

I'd like to make the point that the jihadists do not represent "radical" Islam, they represent mainstream Islam, as represented by the most prominent religious and political leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Palestine (among other prominent Muslim states).

The Islamic "radicals" are the ones who peacefully coexist with people of other religions.

I already made that point in the article, though I used the word "traditional" instead of "mainstream":

It is a war that Islam has declared against Enlightenment-based societies. The problem is not the Koran or Islam. The problem is radical (as in going to the root of the idea) Islam or Islamism, or Orthodox Islam, or the traditional Islam of history that requires the marriage of mosque and state accompanied by full implementation of chop-your-hands-off-style Sharia.

I find it interesting that so many here fall into the logical fallacy of exclusion of the middle. Both the Caliphatists, and those who would burn a billion people to vapor in order to stop Islam, are using the same definition of religion. That is they both assume that "real" religion resides always and only with scriptural literalists. This has been the case at different times with both Christianity and Islam, and both have suffered for that.

It is noteworthy that both Christianity and Islam spent centuries dominated by an Imperial State. The Roman Empire of Constantinople, in the case of Christianity, and the Caliphate in the case of Islam. Both saw the attempts to "unify" their creeds by these imperiums, and the scriptural literalism used to do that, alongside imperial executioners, served the Imperial State in both cases far better than it ever served the religious attention on the divine of the populace.

There are Muslims who are not scriptural literalists. Yes, the Caliphatists reject their stance, and have more and more often used violence against them. There are Christians who reject scriptural literalism, including, I am told, a majority of Evangelist Christians. Fortunately, our own attempts to revive the Roman Empire continue to fail, from Napoleon, to Hitler, to the EU. So, the difference is that Islam is still plagued by its imperialists.

I would suggest that the most useful thing the US can do is to help in bringing safety to those Moslems who are not scriptural literalists. Without their adherence, the Caliphatists will have no hope to renew the Moslem copy of the Roman Empire of Constantinople, and Sharia will be a dead letter for anyone not a Caliphatist themselves.

Must disagree with your, "There are Muslims who are not scriptural literalists."

Somewhere close by I try to liken a "moderate Muslim" to being "a little bit pregnant" and picking choosing verses to observe, from out of an unforgiving Koran.

Christians, however, can be non-scriptural, or non-literal because we lack that stifling rigidity of the Koran. My impression as a Christian is that their Koran has zero tolerance for deviation.

Now, if a practicing observant Muslim will say that the Koran is flexible, then let him say it out loud; and let these so called 'Moderate Muslims" join us in battle against their co-religionists. That simply is not going to happen. Hence our dilemma today.

Christians grew out of arguing about the number of angels dancing on a pinhead. Muslims have not........have they? Hence their throat-slitting today continuing unabated centuries after their founding.

The problem is Conservative Islam, which means, the solid majority of Muslims, whom support Muslim Supremacism, second class status for Jews, Christians, and Women, severe punishment for apostacy, and blasphemy laws. In a word, Shariah Law. AKA, the prescriptions of Muhammad channelling Allah, and his example of divinely inspired behavior.